Ida Grove, IA 51445 Frost Dates
51445, near Ida Grove, IA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/27, roughly 242 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/12, roughly 167 days after the last spring frost.
Ida Grove sits in USDA Zone 5a (-20 to -15°F average annual minimum). The dates above are NOAA's 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting station, a 30-year average, not a forecast.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Ida Grove's growing season runs out in roughly 6 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
The actual range around Ida Grove's last frost
04/27 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/12 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/11 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Ida Grove against the rest of the dataset
About 167 days separate Ida Grove's last and first frost, putting it 30,029 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IA, it ranks 417 of 1,042.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 51445: local microclimates, on what one yard in Ida Grove can differ from the 51445 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5a and Ida Grove's frost date answer different questions.